Tuesday, March 31, 2015

At the turn of the last century the Upper West Side near
Riverside Drive rivaled Fifth and Madison Avenues with its lavish
mansions. At No. 309 West 72nd
Street, just around the corner from Riverside Drive, William E. Diller was
constructing one more.

Begun in 1899 the house was designed by Gilbert A.
Schellenger and was meant to hold its own among the speculative residences
aimed at the very rich. As construction
continued in 1900, William D’Alton Mann added to his fortune and questionable
business practices by founding The Smart
Set magazine.

Willam D. Mann -- photo from the collection of the Library of Congress

The widely-talented Mann was born in Sandusky, Ohio on
September 27, 1839. Educated as a civil
engineer, he distinguished himself in the Civil War not only for organizing the
First Michigan Cavalry and the Seventh Michigan Cavalry; but for inventing “valuable
accoutrements for troops” as described later by Who’s Who in New York City and
State.

Following the war he settled in Mobile, Alabama where he manufactured
cotton seed oil and ran a direly-needed railroad construction operation. It was here that he first dabbled in
journalism as the proprietor of the Mobile Register.

William D’Alton Mann’s business sense and inventiveness
would have continued to garner him a significant fortune had he not continued
in publishing. In January 1872 he
patented the “boudoir car” and spent a decade in Europe marketing it
there. Upon his return in 1883 he
settled in New York City, sold his Mann Boudoir Car Co. to the Pullman Car
Company, and in 1891 became editor and owner of Town Topics.

It was the beginning of the end of Mann’s respectability and
reputation among society’s highest echelons.
The high-end appearing newspaper offered news, literature, sports and
business advice as a clever disguise.
Its subscribers were, in fact, interested only in the social columns,
which were in fact a gossip sheet.

In the Gilded Age of the 1890s when the wives of New York’s
millionaires scratched their way to social significance, every scandalous word—true
or not—printed in Town Topics was read with delicious zeal. Those at the highest levels trembled in fear
of being mentioned in Mann’s scathing columns. He rarely
printed names; but gave tantalizing and obvious clues like “though unfortunately
a woman, is not an American, but a specimen of British aristocracy.”

Millionaires with names like Vanderbilt, Gould, Morgan and
Whitney met with Mann in the days just before Town Topics went to press—normally
at Delmonico’s—and made deals to ensure discretion. The amounts paid to bribe Mann were incredible;
William K. Vanderbilt paying $25,000 (in the neighborhood of $715,000 today)
and Thomas Fortune Ryan, for instance, paying $10,000.

Pleased with his successful newspaper, Mann founded The Smart Set in 1900.. By now he had organized a network of informants
including household servants, hotel employees, telegraph operators, tailors and
seamstresses who eagerly exchanged juicy overheard information for cash. Even socialites, realizing Town Topics and The Smart Set were efficient means to achieve vengeance, sold secrets.

Late in 1901 William E. Diller’s speculative mansion at No.
309 West 72nd Street was completed.
Schellenger’s five-story Renaissance Revival design featured a
two-story, three-sided bay at the second and third floors, supported by a
columned entrance portico. Clad in
Indiana limestone and buff-colored brick, it was intended for a family of
wealth, refinement and decorum. Instead
it would get William and his bride.

The exclusive nature of the neighborhood is evidenced by the surviving John S. Sutphen, Sr. house next door (left).

William D’Alton Mann had remarried not long before the
completion of the house to Sophia (called Sophie) Hartog. It was possibly William Diller’s
advertisement in the New-York Tribune on April 28, 1902 that caught Mann’s
eye. Diller marketed the house as in the
choicest neighborhood with “every modern convenience, including large electric
passenger elevator.”

Diller's advertisement appeared in the New-York Tribune on April 28, 1902 (copyright expired)

Moving in with the couple was Mann’s daughter, Emma Mann
Wray. Not long afterward, cracks began
to appear in the foundation of Mann’s scandal- and extortion-based empire. In 1903 he was engaged in a
lengthy libel suit. But things
deteriorated further after he scandalized Alice Roosevelt the following
year. Mann’s newspaper said she wore “costly
lingerie” for the “edification of men” and was guilty of “indulging freely in
stimulants.” The article said rumors
around Newport suggested she and a “certain multi-millionaire” engaged in “certain
doings that gentle people are not supposed to discuss.”

Collier’s Weekly
vehemently attacked Mann’s sleazy operations. And when Mann announced in 1904 that he
intended to publish Fads and Fancies,
a book-form compilation of Town Topics, he
went too far. Mann offered the book at
pre-publication subscription to high society folks. On July 15, 1905 The New York Times reported “From Louis H. Orr of the firm which has
printed the work to be published by the Town Topics Publishing Company under
the title of ‘Fads and Fancies,’ it was learned yesterday that $1,500 was
merely the minimum price set for that work, and that a large number of copies
had been subscribed for at sums several times larger.”

The first person to purchase a subscription had been John
Jacob Astor, on July 30, 1904, quickly followed by Mrs. Howard Gould and
Clarence Mackay. By the time of The
Times article, well-known names as far-flung as Frank Tilford, Stanford White,
Florenz Ziegfield, Isaac Guggenheim and Ogden Amour, the Chicago meat packing tycoon, had paid up.

But broker Edwin M. Post would not be
intimidated. He had Mann’s solicitor,
Charles H. Ahle, arrested on charges of attempted extortion.

Mann attempted to deflect the controversy. When a reporter from The Evening Telegram
visited him at his West 72nd Street mansion on Monday, July 24,
1905, the publisher insisted “Fads and Fancies is to be a specimen of the
highest art in printing, bookbinding, engraving and everything that pertains to
the printers’ art, as a biography of the lives of one hundred of the greatest
men who by their achievements are destined to mark the beginning of the
twentieth century.”

He vociferously said “It is nobody’s business who subscribes
to ‘Fads and Fancies.’ This thing is absolutely legitimate. There is absolutely no blackmailing, or
anything of the kind connected with it, and I defy any one to prove it.”

The courts decided to do just that. On December 29, 1905 The Times reported “The
methods used in obtaining subscriptions to ‘Fads and Fancies’ were gone into at
length yesterday at the hearing before Magistrate Whitman, in the West Side
Court.” Among those who appeared as
witnesses were Mark Twain, and Peter Cooper Hewitt.

Things only got worse about three weeks later when William d’Alton
Mann was arrested for perjury. His daughter,
Emma Mann Wray, bailed him out by offering as collateral the property at 810-828 West 38th
Street, where Mann was building his new publishing building. The charges against him
said, in part, “That the testimony so given by Mann was false and untrue, and
that Mann willfully, knowingly, corruptly, and feloniously testified falsely.”

Years of litigation resulted in murmurs that Mann would walk
away from his publishing firm. On
February 24, 1912 The New York Times reported “It was rumored yesterday that
Col. William D. Mann was about to sell Town Topics and retire from newspaper
work. When he was seen last night at his
house, 309 West Seventy-second Street, Col. Mann said:

‘I have been twenty-one years at the post of duty, and I
hope I shall continue there for as many more.
I do not know where the rumor originated, but you can say positively
that I have no intention of retiring or selling Town Topics.’”

Before 1920 William Mann left 72nd Street. On April 20 that year The New York Times
mentioned “Mr. Mann is now living on Madison Avenue.” He had just purchased a ten-acre estate in
Morristown, New Jersey and intended to make “extensive repairs” before moving
in. Four weeks later, on May 17, he was
dead.

No. 309 West 72nd Street was for a time home to
Miss Lucile Peterson. Then in 1929 it
was converted to a doctor’s office and “housekeeping apartment” on the ground
floor and non-housekeeping apartments above.
The following year Beatrice Taylor leased the house for 21 years, with
the intentions of operating it as “a furnished apartment house.”

The projecting bay provided a commodious balcony at the fourth floor, access through French doors.

The tenant list in those Depression years included some
not-so-respectable characters. On April
29, 1931, Lt. Walter Culhane of the New York City Police Department arrested
Joseph Dinan, a Bronx gangster. The New
York Times reported on June 26 that a month afterward Culhane arrested “a
confederate at 309 West Seventy-second Street.”

The humiliation of the once-grand home continued when in
1937 architect Roy Clinton Morris converted the interiors to 19 furnished
rooms.

The building was owned by Samuel H. Hofstadter, Jr. in 1958
when in reaction to recent deaths the city instituted new fire laws. They required owners of multi-family buildings to install sprinkler systems. Hofstadter waged a legal battle, suing the
city and calling the law unconstitutional.
The courts did not agree and on
March 28 that year he lost what newspapers deemed the “sprinkler fight.”

The interiors, once filled with costly furniture, carpeting and artwork, are spartan -- http://streeteasy.com/building/309-west-72-street-manhattan/3b?gclid=COqJ2eetwcQCFahZ7AodRQEA_w

With only minor changes the exterior of the Mann house is
greatly intact. The interiors have not
fared so well. There are still 19
apartments in the building that housed one of the early 20th century’s
most colorful publishers--a man able to instill terror in the hearts of New
York’s wealthiest citizens.

Monday, March 30, 2015

A bit soiled in 1930, the church building is no less impressive. Directly behind (left) is the 1854 Parish House. Down the block is the church and tower of the North Baptist Church. photograph from the collection of the New York Public Library

On July 3, 1850 an advertisement appeared in the New-York Daily
Tribune announcing “For Sale—That valuable property known as 82 and 84
Nassau-st…formerly occupied by the South Baptist Church.” The structure was no longer needed by the South
Baptist Church as its congregation prepared to move far north to Greenwich
Village.

In the two decades between the 1820s and 1840s Greenwich
Village had transformed from a bucolic hamlet to a substantial community with
impressive homes and thriving businesses.
In 1845 the Hammond Street Presbyterian Church erected a stunning Greek
Revival structure at No. 20 Hammond Street (later renamed 11th
Street) on the corner of Factory Street (it, too, would be renamed; becoming
Waverley Place). Costing the
congregation $15,000, the wooden building was covered in stucco to suggest
stone. The church was entered through a
monumental classical portico upheld by four Ionic columns. The peak of its pediment rose above the
three-story brownstone homes that shared the block. Pilasters along the Waverley Place elevation
separated the soaring windows.

photograph from the collection of the New York Public Library.

The structure was completed before February 1846; and on
February 7 the New-York Daily Tribune announced that “Rev. Gardiner Spring, D.
D. will preach to-morrow evening at half past 7 o’clock” at the Hammond-street
Presbyterian Church.

Reverend Spring and his flock would not last long in the
magnificent new building. In 1848 the
church was sold at auction to the newly-formed Eastern Congregational Church. The 1890 book Old New York recalled “In the Autumn of 1848, the new and elegant
edifice on the corner of Hammond and Factory streets, New York, erected by the
Hammond Street Presbyterian Church, was bought at public auction by Messrs. S.
B. Hunt and H. C. Bowen, for about fifteen thousand dollars.” That sale price would amount to about $457,000
today.

The deeply recessed entrance was sheltered by a monumental portico. photo by Edmund V. Gillon, from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York http://collections.mcny.org/Collection/[St.%20John's-in-the-Village%20Church.]-24UAKVGX5MT.html

“Public worship was sustained in the house for several weeks
under the direction of the proprietors; and in the month of November a church
was organized under the name of the Hammond Street Congregational Church.” The congregation was headed by Rev. Dr. William
Patton. Decades
later the 1879 pamphlet “Honour they Father” would say of him. “Anecdotes are abundant to-day in these parts
of his strength as a preacher, and his rare gift of humor and geniality in
conversation. His commanding presence,
together with his original way of enforcing the truth, gave his sermons a
remarkable staying quality.”

“Staying quality,” however, did not apply to his position with
the Hammond-Street Congregational Church nor to the congregation’s existence
here. When the South Baptist Church
placed the advertisement in the Tribune to sell its former building, it had
already purchased the Hammond Street edifice.

On November 15, 1851 The New York Times reported “We learn
that Rev. Dr. Patton was recently dismissed by a council, from the pastoral
charge of the Hammond-street Congregational Church. The church-edifice was sold some time since
to the Baptist congregation of Rev. Dr. Somers.” The newspaper noted that a special committee
had been formed to find a replacement pastor for Dr. Patton.

If Greenwich Village residents thought that, finally, the
exquisite church on Hammond Street had found a long-term owner, they were
wrong.

The one-year anniversary of the
Baptist’s acquisition of the structure was celebrated on February 25 1852. The Times reported “The Anniversary exercises
(recently postponed) of the Sabbath School of the South Baptist Church, will be
held at the Church corner of Hammond and Factory-streets, on Sunday morning, 25th
inst., when an address may be expected from the Rev. Thos. Armitage.”

The church members, too, expected to be here for the long
haul. Two years later, in 1854, they
constructed a harmonious Green Revival parish house behind the church at No.
224 Waverley Place Street. But the end
was on the horizon for the Baptists in their Hammond Street Greek temple.

On May 5, 1856 The New York Times reported “On Sunday, this
Church, corner of Hammond-st. and Waverley-Place, bearing over the entrance a
tablet, “Memorial of Bishop Wainwright, Church of St. John Evangelist, seats
free, 1856,’ was formally opened by three appropriate services.” Within exactly one decade the church had been
home to a Presbyterian, Congregationalist, Baptist, and now an Episcopalian
congregation.

The Rev. Dr. Vinton advised the congregation during his
first sermon, “The church is opened, but
is not yet consecrated until free of debt.
It has passed through several hands, and was last purchased by the
Baptists, under the pastoral care of Rev. G. C. Somers, for the sum of $30,000,
part only being paid.” Dr. Vinton added “It
is situated in a locality where an active minster may be very useful.”

The dignified church building had finally found a long-term
congregation in St. John, Evangelist. The
number of worshipers was increased when, in the 1880s, the congregation of the Church
of St. George The Martyr was invited to share the sanctuary. St. George The Martyr was organized in 1845 “to
build a church and hospital for British immigrants,” according to The
Centennial History of the Protestant Episcopal Church. The congregation had sold its church
building in 1865 and The Centennial History, published in 1886, noted “The
congregation has worshiped, by invitation,…with the congregation of St. John,
Evangelist, in West Eleventh Street, corner of Waverley Place.”

With its guest parish sharing the church, St. John the
Evangelist staged special services for St. George’s Day in 1902. “The church was decorated with the flags and
banners of the United States and Great Britain, and a big St. George’s standard
hung above the alter,” said the New-York Tribune on April 21.

“One of the stained glass windows of the church shows a
portrait of Queen Victoria, and throughout the sermon all the lights were
lowered, so that a lime light in the street without might show up to those
within the colored glass.”

photograph from the collection of the New York Public Library

The Rev. Dr. E. Walpole Warren took the opportunity to
discuss the ongoing and controversial Boer War. Newspapers related that “he hoped to be
able to announce that peace had been proclaimed on terms so magnanimous to the
gallant vanquished that all bitterness and race feeling would be
obliterated. He declared that the
British soldiers had not been guilty of the cruelties attributed to them, and said
that n a very few years the prosperity of the south African lands would prove
that England’s advance meant, as it always had meant, the march of progress and
liberty in the interests of the people and institutions concerned.”

Exactly a year later on St. George’s Day, The Rev. Dr. John
T. Patey revisited the race issue. “We
hear a great deal to-day of the Anglo-Saxon race, its greatness and its
mission. The vast British empire,
embracing as it does in both hemispheres controlling peoples of different
races, habits, thoughts and principles, must remember that power means
responsibility, that control means care, that might means happiness, that
authority must be temperately exercised, and the welfare of the weak sought.”

By the time world war erupted in Europe St. John the
Evangelist had grown to 459 members.
The congregation would see immense changes in the neighborhood. Greenwich Village became Manhattan’s Bohemia,
drawing artists, poets, musicians and writers through the first decades of the
new century. But by the 1960s the area immediately surrounding
St. John the Evangelist drew a more nefarious lot.

Thieves repeatedly broke into the church and on March 7,
1971 Rev. Dr. Charles Howard Graf told reporters that thievery “has been a
constant problem.” The New York Times
reported “Dr. Graf said that only a few weeks ago the church had replaced
several chalices stolen from the sacristy.”

The exterior of the pre-Civil War structure was restored in
February 1971 at a cost of $14,000. Around
midnight on March 6, two weeks after the renovations were completed, the night
custodian telephoned police. He reported
that he had found a door of the parish house on Waverly Place broken in, giving
the intruder access to the church building.

The magnificent structure was unchanged around 1970. The spread-winged eagle had perched within the pediment for decades. photo by Edmund V. Gillon, from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York http://collections.mcny.org/Collection/[St.%20John's-in-the-Village%20Church.]-24UAKVGX5MT.html

Around an hour later, at 1:15 a.m. the same custodian, Blair
Schench, discovered fire in the church.
The Times reported “While hundreds of spectators crowded nearby streets
in the early morning hours, 120 firemen using 22 pieces of equipment poured
torrents of water on St. John’s in the village, a 125-year old Episcopal
church.” The newspaper said “Before the
fire was declared under control at 3:48 A.M., the roof, west wall and interior
of the church had been destroyed.” The
venerable wooden building was termed by Deputy Chief James Fogarty, “a
lumberyard.”

The resilient St. John’s congregation rebuilt. It spent $650,000 on a red brick structure
designed by Edgar Tafel completed in 1974.
The architect gave a nod to the lost Greek Revival masterpiece,
suggesting columns with brick outlines, and crowning the structure with a
modern interpretation of the classical pediment. The church is protected by the noble 1846
iron fencing—the last remnant of a pre-Civil War treasure.

Saturday, March 28, 2015

In the first decades following the Revolutionary War, the
land known as Lispenard Meadows on Manhattan’s west side north of what would
become Canal Street, was swampy and mosquito infested. But as the city expanded northward, the potential
of the nearly worthless land increased.
In 1817 an ordinance was passed to fill in the marsh and two years later
a sewer was laid along the length of Canal Street, providing improved drainage.

Streets were laid and Federal-style brick houses for working
and middle-class families quickly rose.
One of these was No. 284 Hudson Street, built around 1820. Like the hundreds of similar homes being
constructed simultaneously throughout the city, it was two and a half stories
tall and featured two prominent dormers that punched through the pitched
roof. Devoid of pretension, its
brickwork forewent the more expensive Flemish bond found in the more upscale
houses of the period.

The house became home to Thomas S. Jaycox, who was working
for the United States Government by 1831 as a “clerk.” His salary of $800 that year would translate
to about $22,000 today. Five years later
he held the same position but was still earning the same amount. Perhaps it was his static salary that prompted
him to go into the dry goods business by 1841.

When Jaycox went into business for himself there were
no standard regulations regarding bankruptcies.
It was sometimes a problem for merchants who extended credit, then found
themselves battling any number of local laws in an attempt to regain their
losses.

On January 20, 1841 Thomas S. Jaycox added his name to a
long list of New York City tradesmen and merchants in appealing to the United
States Congress to enact a “uniform bankrupt law.” Among the occupations of the small
businessmen “beseeching” the “honorable body” were fishmonger, auctioneer,
grocer, hardware, butcher, oysterman, painter, and gun manufacturer.

By the mid-1850s the Thomas H. Sill family lived here. In 1855 Thomas Jr. enrolled in Columbia College. Before long actor, producer and lyricist James
Seymour moved in. A favorite at Niblo’s
Garden, he wrote the words to “The Lads Who Live In Ireland” for the play The Duke’s Motto. Its opening lines were:

My name is Ted O’Mannon, I come
from sweet Killarney O,

Sure I can whistle, I can sing,
sure I can plough, and I can sow;

And when I’m courting purty
girls, I never use the blarney O.

Seymour also acted in the play, which was produced at Niblo’s;
playing the part of Carrickfergus, after the original actor took a different role. The Era
Almanack blamed the play’s failure squarely on Seymour. “Mr. J. Seymour was cast for
Carrickfergus. The change was fatal to
the play, which afterwards ran but a short time.”

Seymour’s son was drawn into the acting profession as well. When Edwin Booth staged Hamlet at his Shakespearean theater, seven-year old Willie Seymour
played The Actress. In casting the boy
as a female part, Booth was being true to the historical Shakespearean practice.

On Thursday, September 22, 1864 James Seymour “late of Niblo’s
Garden,” as reported in The New York Times, died at the age of 41. His funeral was held in the house the
following day, after which his body was taken to Greenwood Cemetery for burial.

The neighborhood was still mainly residential and mostly respectable. Within months Dr. Henry F. Hessler had moved into the
house. His seemingly enviable office
hours were between 9 and 10 a.m. and 7 to 8 p.m. daily. The German-born physician would go on to be
appointed Professor Clinical Midwifery and German Instructor in Obstetrics at
the College of Midwifery.

The wooden dormers survive in fine condition.

But by the end of the Civil War the area had become
decidedly more commercial. The ground
floor of No. 284 Hudson Street was converted to a saloon by 1876. Its saloon keeper (who repeatedly changed his
surname) was arrested on the evening of March 12, 1876 for violating the Excise
law. At the time of his arrest he gave
his name as Adolph Midler.

The Excise law required saloon keepers and liquor dealers to
purchase a license—an expense that many found burdensome. On August 7 a year later, a New York Times
reporter visited the office of the Excise Commissioners where crowds of recently-arrested
saloon keepers applied for their licenses.
Among them was Adolph Miller (his last name had changed) who had been arrested again and charged
with $100 bail.

“While they waited, they talked about the lookout, and
consoled with each other on the ‘hard times’ on which the trade has
fallen. Several in the crowd had been
locked up the night before, although they had already procured receipts, and
these were loud in their denunciations and the shuffling police of the Police
and Excise Boards…The Germans were especially loud in their abuse of [Tammany
Hall], and many of them swore they would never vote the Tammany ticket again,” reported the newspaper.

Adolph seems to have been conscientious about renewing his
license after the unpleasant affair. On
July 28, 1882 he spent $75 on his license, a significant $1,760 in today’s
dollars for a small-time bar owner. He
now spelled his surname “Muller” on the application.

When Bonfort’s Wine
and Spirit Circular listed his business here in 1890, it
spelled his last name “Mueller.”

By the turn of the century Mueller’s saloon was gone,
replaced by the C & G Fina “barber fixtures” store. Upstairs lived policeman James J. Lockhart,
his wife Adelphia and their son Harry.
Lockhart had been appointed to the force as a patrolman on February 10,
1897.

As the Hudson Street neighborhood became more industrial,
the businesses on the ground floor followed suit. In 1909 Villone & Co. sold “felt roundings”
from here; and by 1913 L. Thomas ran the New York branch of the Chicago based
Thomas & Smith, Inc. The firm
manufactured and sold the Thomas’ “Acme” air purifying and cooling system. The company would remain in the building for
several years, selling related products, like power pumps, as well.

As the decades passed, the small brick houses along Hudson
Street were one-by-one demolished for hulking warehouses and commercial
buildings. Somehow, however, No. 248
Hudson held on. In 1946 it sold for
$7,300; about $87,000 in today’s dollars.

Today a neighborhood restaurant operates in the ground floor
where Adolph Muller served lager beer to sailors and hard-working immigrants in the 1880s. The upper floor and attic survive much as
they appeared when Thomas S. Jaycox lived here; one more miraculous survivor
from Manhattan’s post Revolutionary decades.

Friday, March 27, 2015

Years after most of the vintage buildings in the Noho section of Broadway were restored, No. 734 is a rusting hulk.

In 1839 three of society’s most influential sisters moved
into adjoining houses at Nos. 732 through 736 Broadway.The property had been owned by John Jacob
Astor since 1804.Although some sources
say that Rebecca Jones purchased No. 732 with her own money; most likely it was
wealthy banker John Mason who presented the three houses as gifts to his
daughters.Sarah Jones moved into No.
736, Rebecca was at No. 732, and Mary Mason Jones took the middle house at No.
734.

Mary Mason Jones was the reigning sovereign of New York society.It would be many years before Caroline Astor
eclipsed her. Mary's brick-faced Broadway home would be the setting of glittering
entertainments.The three houses were
inwardly connected.Their ballrooms
could be thrown open into a single impressive space for the grandest of
balls.Mary had married her father’s
business partner, Isaac Jones, in 1819.Both families traced their roots in America to the 17th
century.

Decades later Mary’s niece, Edith Wharton, would immortalize
her in the form of the overweight dowager Mrs. Manson Mignott in The Age of Innocence.”According to Luther S. Harris in his book Around Washington Square, 25-year old George
Templeton Strong noted an evening at the “ball of the season” in the Jones
house on December 23, 1845.Strong was
unimpressed with the “very splendid affair” at which two of the ballrooms had
been thrown open.He especially was
displeased with a new dance, the Polka, which he described as “a kind of insane
Tartar jig performed to a disagreeable music of an uncivilized character.”

Strong then turned his attention to his hostess, calling Mary
Mason Jones “fat but comely; indeed, there’s enough of her to supply a small
settlement with wives.”All in all,
George Temple Strong walked out of the Jones mansion feeling “Modern civilization
has achieved thus much, that people making fools of themselves do it in an
ornamental way.”

But the relentless northward tide of commerce eventually
threatened the refined Broadway neighborhood.One by one Manhattan’s wealthiest citizens abandoned the area.Mary Mason Jones would surprise all of
them.Just as the character in Wharton’s
novel had done, Mary selected as the site of her new mansion the rocky,
undeveloped land far to the north that her father had purchased in 1823.In 1867 she began work on a block-long group
of white marble, French-styled mansions on the unpaved Fifth Avenue from57th to 58th
Streets.Mary Mason Jones would move to No. 1 East 57th Street and wait for society to come to her.

The Broadway residence would not survive much longer.In 1872 it was demolished to make way for a commercial
structure in what was now becoming New York’s garment district.On Saturday, July 6, 1872 the Real Estate
Record and Builders’ Guide reported that architects D. & J. Jardine had
filed plans for “one five-story cast-iron store” for owners G. & H.
Rosenblatt.

The Rosenblatt brothers had emigrated from Bavaria and
established their business importing silk and ribbons.As Mary Mason Jones could attest,
mid-Victorian fashions depended greatly on both items.By now both men were wealthy and their operation successful
enough to afford its own building.

David and John Jardine produced a dignified neo-Grec
building.The use of cast iron facades
had become rampantly popular within the past decade for its fire-resistant
properties, its cost efficient production of intricate designs, and
the quickness with which the massive pre-cast parts could be bolted onto the
masonry.Completed in 1873, No. 734
Broadway mimicked its stone counterparts with rusticated piers, engaged columns
with ornate capitals, and segmentally-arched windows.

The Rosenblatt’s apparently operated only from the upper
floors.In 1875 the Real Estate Record
and Builders’ Guide listed the James W. Meagher’s Hazzard & Co. restaurant
here.By 1884 Marcus Ward & Co.’s
bookstore was here, creating competition for the E. A. Mac booksellers next
door in No. 732.Ward specialized in
religious books and in 1884 introduced The “Bible Forget-Me-Nots” Series,
described as “miniature text books by the Rev. J. R. MacDuff, D.
D.”An advertisement described “each
tiny volume has an introduction and hymn by the author, and golden texts for
every day.”

Founded by Marcus Ward in England nearly a century earlier, the
firm’s American agent for years had been Alfred Ireland.When it was incorporated 1883, Marcus Ward’s
nephew, William Hardcastle Ward traveled to New York to set up the Broadway
branch.Ward was one of the corporation’s
directors and among its largest stockholders.

On May 2, 1888 The Evening World reported “The business was
carried on here in the large store at No. 734 Broadway under a lease which had
been renewed from time to time and which expired yesterday.”But suddenly Ward and Ireland found themselves
the defendants in a lawsuit filed by their English parent company.“The suit is one of a sensational nature, as
it involves a quarrel among the partners of a great commercial house that has
been in business for the best part of a century,” said The Evening World.

William Hardcastle Ward and Alfred Ireland had planned to
relocate the bookstore.They were
shocked to find that the parent firm was attempting to take over the lease on
734 Broadway and carry on the Marcus Ward & Co. bookstore itself.Now, with the lease expiring, the two men
scrambled to renew it.“They will remain
on the premises rather than let them fall into the hands of the new firm.”

The English faction accused Ward and Ireland of “secret maneuvers.”On May 1 Judge Van Brunt of the Supreme Court
issued an injunction restraining the two men from “interfering with the
plaintiffs at their place of business, No. 734 Broadway.”

The Evening World reported “The original lease does not
contain a renewal clause.A bitter
contest is expected when the matter comes up in court, as it will in a day or two.”

As the booksellers fought it out, apparel and millinery
firms operated from the upper floors.Louis Levy, “wholesale dealer in clothing,” was here at the time.By 1895 hat maker Leman A. Allier had moved
in.And around this time furriers began to
call No. 734 home.

By now garment workers were organizing into unions, to the
disgruntlement of owners.The cloak
makers employed by Peller Brothers walked out in August 1897, complaining of
low wages.The New York Times reported
on August 21 that they “returned to work yesterday, as the firm promised to pay
union wages.”

The mix of tenants at the turn of the century included H. V.
Allien “a dealer in military goods;” M. L. Cohen & Brother, who advertised
for a “first-class salesman to handle our high grade furs as a side line” in
1904; and Gilroy & Bloomfield, cloak manufacturers.

At some point after 1910 the cast iron façade was “simplified,”
although exact details of what that toning down encompassed seem to be lost.

The building continued to house clothing firms into the
1920s, including Blumberg Borland, even as the garment district moved past 34th
Street.Then in 1951 the Atlantic
Luggage Manufacturing Company bought the building “for occupancy.”

The second half of the 20th century found No. 734
neglected and rusting.An industrial
fire escape zig-zagged down the face of the building. By 1973 Samuel Weiser’s
occupied by ground floor.The New York
Times said it “is known as the supermarket of the occult.It is said to have the largest collection of
books on mysticism, the occult and Eastern religions in the country, possibly
in the world.”

Mysticism, the occult, and spiritualism blossomed in the
1970s as the hippie movement celebrated the coming Age of Aquarius.Donald Weiser, son of the store’s founder,
told a Times reporter in October 1976 that among of his biggest-selling
subjects at the present were “pyramid power” items.

It was around this time that the upper floors were converted
to apartments.When the owner, Will
Brand Corporation, disconnected electricity to the old elevator in 1981, the
residents were forced to resort to the stairs.

With New York University expanding into the neighborhood around
No. 734 Broadway, the retail stores reflected their new customers.In 1979 Record City, a massive vinyl record
store, replaced Samuel Weiser’s.In 1985
Zoot moved in—a vintage clothing store that would remain for several years.

As the century drew to a close, the space became a Foot Locker
store.It was a scene of terror on
August 29, 1996.Around 8 p.m. on that
Wednesday three men walked into the store, posing as customers.They then pulled out guns and forced the
manager to open the safe.Locking the
front door, they pushed eight people into a bathroom.

But one 18-year old girl was even less fortunate.Before leaving with the cash from the safe,
they forced the woman into another part of the shop where they raped and sodomized
her.She was later treated at Beth Israel Hospital.

In the meantime, residents upstairs had become tired of
living in a walk-up and sued Will Brand Corporation in an effort to have
elevator service restored.In November
1997 work was still underway on the elevator.While it was operational, none of its safety equipment had been restored
and no light was installed in the cab yet.Nevertheless, some of the residents took their chances and used the
elevator rather than suffering the five flights of stairs.

One of them was 28-year old Heather McDonald, a NYU
student.Around 9:30 on Friday night,
August 12, 1997 she stepped into what she believed to be the elevator car on
the fifth floor.Unable to see that the
elevator was not at her floor, she stepped into the empty shaft, falling five
floors.One of her legs had to be
amputated, the other was broken and she suffered a punctured lung.

Building inspectors noted that the owners had been cited for
various violations concerning the elevator since March 1991.

In May 2014 the Landmarks Preservation Commission approved
plans by restoration architects Beyer Blinder and Belle to restore the façade and
add a two-story penthouse, invisible from the street.

Then nothing was done.

The architects' before and after proposals. photo http://ny.curbed.com/tags/734-broadway

The beautiful, vacant and rusting structure was purchased by
Thor Equities in February 2015; the same firm that had bought No. 736 Broadway
for $11 million in November 2011.Joseph
Sitt, principal of Thor Equities remarked that he was undecided as to whether
he would proceed with the proposed penthouse.

non-credited photographs taken by the authormany thanks to reader Grace Buchanan for suggesting this post

Thursday, March 26, 2015

By the time speculative builder Andrew Lockwood erected the
string of houses from No. 46 to No. 60 West 11th Street in 1843, homes had been appearing in the neighborhood for more than a decade. Lockwood was one of the most prolific
developers in Greenwich Village at the time. His new row on West 11th Street was designed in the popular Greek Revival.

Like the other homes along Lockwood’s row, No. 60 was faced
in red brick above a rusticated brownstone basement. Instead of the dormered attic of the Federal
style, it boasted a full third floor.
The hefty stone enframement at the top of the brownstone stoop embraced
a more elegant entrance—carved pilasters flanked by sidelights, a generous
transom, and handsomely-carved entablature.

In 1851, eight years after No. 60 was completed, the Rev.
Samuel Cooke arrived in New York from New Haven. He had been brought to the city by the
congregation of St. Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church at Lafayette and Great Jones
Street. Although West 11th
Street was hardly near the church, Cooke and his family moved into No. 60.

The New York Times would later recall “St. Bartholomew’s at
that time numbered among its parishioners some of the wealthiest men in New
York. Among the Vestrymen who encouraged
and aided him in his undertaking were William H. Vanderbilt, Cornelius Vanderbilt,
C. G. Williams, President of the Chemical Bank; Alfred M. Hoyt, and William H.
Appleton.”

Cooke came from a long and distinguished line of clergymen,
going back to Milford Cooke who settled in what would become Bridgeport in 1650. He and was married to the former Emma
Walden. Their eldest son, Samuel Walden
Cooke enrolled in Columbia College in 1860; the same year that the 11th
Street house was the scene of the funeral of Maria Pell, Rev. Cooke’s
sister-in-law.

Young Samuel excelled in school.
In 1862 he was on Columbia’s list of “Honor Men.” But tragedy would soon strike the Cooke
family. On Friday morning, December 9,
1864, the college senior died “very suddenly.”
Three days later relatives and the pall bearers gathered at the 11th
Street house at 3:00 before heading to the funeral at St. Bartholomew’s Church.

Deemed by Norwalk, Connecticut historian Charles Melbourne
Selleck decades later, “an excellent, highly rated and now venerable presbyter
of the Protestant Episcopal church,” Rev. Samuel Cooke stayed on at St.
Bartholomew’s until 1887, the year after his wife’s death.

The house was not church property; but was owned by James
Gallatin, a wealthy property owner who also owned the abutting houses at Nos.
56 and 58. When he died on May 28, 1876
he bequeathed Nos. 58 and 58 to his 19-year old grandson James F. Gallatin, and
No. 60 to James’s brother, 27-year old Albert Lewis Gallatin.

Both young men were extremely wealthy. When Albert died at the age of 31 on
February 12, 1880, he left his widow, Zefita, $100,000—about $2.35 million
today. But the young man’s unexpected
death seems to have triggered a battle over the property. On April 9, 1881 The Real Estate Record &
Builders’ Guide reported that titles to all three of the houses were being
contested.

On March 28, 1888 Zefita filed suit against her
brother-in-law, James F. Gallatin, and mother-in-law, Harriet I. Gallatin in an
attempt to prevent them from taking her inheritance. The legal battle lasted until June
1895. By now Zefita was the Countess
Rohan-Chabot and lived in Europe. The New
York Times explained that she had “interposed objections to the return of the
property to her brother-in-law, but she withdrew them when he signed an
agreement providing that a sum should be set aside by which she would receive
her income on $100,000.”

The house was sold to Leocadie Farrell who, like the
Gallatins, owned much property. In 1906
she recorded the annual rent on the property as $1,400 “over all repairs.” The landlady was charging a little over
$3,000 a month in today’s dollars.

Mrs. Farrell’s tenant in 1903 was William L. Detmold, a
woolens dealer; and by 1910 Edward B. Taber was living here. That year he helped found the New York Advancement
Company; organized to put together a 1913 World’s Fair. The fair was meant to commemorate the 300th
anniversary of the first European settlement on Manhattan Island.

The Farrell family held No. 60 West 11th Street
until July 1929, when Leocadie’s estate sold it to Morris L. Florence. He announced that he intended to alter the
house for his occupancy. The title was
put into the name of his wife, Lee Florence.
But, like the previous owners, the Florences leased the house rather
than move in.

In December 1933 Dr. Herman L. Kasha signed a lease on the
first and second floors, paying $3,120 a year.
He opened his medical practice here; one that would find him in court in
1942. In a sensational trial that year
Kasha was accused of running an abortion clinic in the house. Reportedly, from 1933 to 1938 physicians
city-wide would send patients to No. 60 West 11th Street to have
their unwanted pregnancies terminated.

Morris and Lee Florence sold the house about the same time
that the ugly affair came to light. It
became home to the family of Alvin Udell.

The house with a brief sordid past received a restoration
and renovation when Timothy Forbes, son of multimillionaire Malcolm S. Forbes,
purchased it. His renovations resulted in interior spaces that ran the gamut from Victorian, to Mid-Century Modern, to starkly contemporary. In April 2012 he sold the venerable home for $11.5 million.

Wednesday, March 25, 2015

In the mid-1870s, the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood around the
corner of Eighth Avenue and 40th Street was no place for the timid
or naïve.On the morning of February 20,1876 Michael McCabe
was standing on that corner when, according to The New York Times, “he was
attacked by five of the notorious Eleventh avenue gang, who beat him, pinioned
his arms, and robbed him of his watch and $3 in money.”

The street gangs that terrorized Hell’s Kitchen were
ruthless and dangerous.The following
year Moritz Igel, “an aged gentleman,” was passing the same corner when he
paused to buy an apple.He took out his
pocketbook, which contained $13.20, and “was immediately set upon by two
desperate thieves, named Patrick McGowan and William Korn, who struck him on
the face, and snatched his pocket-book.”

The old man chased the crooks a few feet; but they turned on
him and threw him to the ground, beat and kicked him.When a drug store clerk saw the commotion and
the bleeding Igel, he tried to help; but he was no match for the street thugs
and had to retreat.The feisty Moritz
Igel was not ready to give in, however.

The Times reported “although Mr. Igel was bleeding and badly
bruised, he followed them until they were arrested by Officer Lavell of the
Twenty-second Precinct.The old
gentleman immediately recognized his assailants and they were taken to the
Station-house.”They were convicted for “highway
robbery.”

Around 1882 a somewhat surprising improvement came to the
corner.An up-to-date brick hotel and
saloon replaced two of the three-story structures that lined the block.Considering the gritty neighborhood, No. 618
Eighth Avenue was unexpectedly handsome.The architect drew from the newly-popular Queen Anne style, embellishing
the red brick façade with geometric designs, sawtooth brick
panels, and sandstone trim.Carved tympanum-like
decorations embellished the Eighth Avenue openings at the third and fifth
floors.

A painted sign on the 40th Street facade announced "Shea's Lager Beer" in 1906. Two sets of swinging saloon doors can be seen at the corner. The building's very respectable appearance was anything but. photograph by Byron Company, from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York http://collections.mcny.org/Collection/Hotel%20Shea%27s,%20618%20Eighth%20Avenue.-2F3XC5K1J0R.html

The hotel entrance around the corner at 274 West 40th
Street featured hefty stone stoop newels and a stone portico.Its skinny columns were capped with
fanciful carved capitals.

An architecturally striking new hotel would not change the
sketchy neighborhood, however.As a
parade passed by the building on August 12, 1895 a petty thief worked the
crowd.The following day The Times
announced “John Taylor, a colored pickpocket, was arrested Monday night while
he was following a parade.”Three years
later Henry Waters’ rooms in the hotel were burglarized on December 22. The robber made off with $15 in cash and stocks
valued at $8.25 and $23.25.

Carved stone, creative brickwork and up-to-date design set the hotel apart from its neighbors.

John S. Shea owned the building by the turn of the
century.Shea bought and sold real estate city-wide and
operated several hotels and apartment houses.Mary McWilliams ran what was now called Shea’s Hotel, while it appears
Shea himself operated the saloon.The
residents and patrons of the building were no more respectable than they had
been two decades earlier.

On October 13, 1903 The Sun reported on the raid of Sarah
Williamson’s second floor apartment.“Detectives
Griffin and Kehoe were passing the house when, they say, they got a whiff of
the opium and went in to investigate.”Sarah
was operating an opium den.She had filled
the rooms with the bunks necessary for the stupefied drug users and all the
opium paraphernalia they needed.

“There were five men and one young girl smoking in the
bunks.The girl said she was Eva Wilson
and that she lived in the house.”The
police said Eva looked 17 years old, although she claimed to be 20.Two of the arrested men lived elsewhere; but
19-year old Launci Williamson and 23-year old Roy Williamson, like Eva, lived in
the building.That would be expected
since they were Sarah’s sons.

Two weeks later the police were back.Mary
McWilliams rented an apartment to Morris Lupo and his wife, Della, during the last
week of October.Morris was a sewing
machine salesman and his wife worked in a Broadway department store.The Evening World said that “because of her
beauty,” Della had “many admirers.”Reportedly this resulted in jealousy on Morris’ part; but ironically Della
was even more jealous. She convinced herself that Morris was having an affair with another saleswoman in the store where she worked.

According to Mary Williamson, on Election Night, November 2,
“Mrs. Lupo told me that she had had trouble with her husband about the other
woman in the store and that she was afraid something awful was going to happen.”Della told Mary that she was very sick and
asked her to go to the drug store to buy morphine or laudanum.Mary refused.

Della’s premonition that “something awful was going to
happen” could not have been more accurate.She and Morris argued so vehemently that night that other roomers asked Mary McWilliams to stop the noise.The couple went
out, but when they returned the loud fighting resumed.Then, according to The Evening World the
following morning, “The wordy argument was ended by two small explosions, which
the residents then believed to have been exploding fireworks of the political
campaigns.”

They were not fireworks.Mary McWilliams did not see either of the Lupos leave for work that
morning and when she heard groans coming from their door, she called police.

“Detectives McKenzie and Carmody broke in the door of the
Lupo flat and nearly fell over the dead body of Lupo.One bullet had pierced his brain and another
had lodged in his breast near the heart.He had been dead many hours.

“Investigating further they found Mrs. Lupo, clad in an
Oriental wrapper, unconscious on a divan in a rear room.It was evident she had taken poison.By her side was a bottle which was said to have
contained some kind of a strong narcotic.”

Della Lupo was revived at St. Vincent’s Hospital, then
transferred to Bellevue Hospital where she insisted her husband had committed
suicide.When she found his body, she
said, she was so distraught that she did not want to live.Her explanation did not hold water with
detectives.“The police say that it
would have been impossible for Lupo to have shot himself both in the head and
in the breast,” said the newspaper.

Evidence supported the theory of murder and revealed that
Della Lupo had suffered mental agony after slaying her husband.Morris’ head rested on a pillow on the floor
and “the condition of the room in which the shooting occurred showed the night
of horror the woman had gone through.

“She had tumbled the bed and disarranged the furniture in
her long vigil in the room with the corpse.Then she had tenderly raised the dead man’s head and placed a pillow under
it.She opened the shirt front and
attempted to staunch the flow of blood from the wound in the chest and she
washed the blood away from the wound in the side of the head.”

Still in the hospital, Della Lupo was charged with murder
and attempted suicide.

On February 3, 1904, the jury was on the verge of convicting
Della for murder when they were surprised by a knock on the jury room door.Della Lupo had changed her plea from not
guilty to guilty of manslaughter in the first degree.“She may be punished by imprisonment for not
more than twenty years,” reported The Sun.

John Collins lived here around this time.On October 17, 1905 he was arrested with
three sidekicks after being caught in coordinated streetcar pickpocketing
scheme.Detective Sergeant King responded to a
complaint of the men “being suspicious.”Despite their being “all well dressed and apparently refined,” he
followed them as they boarded a streetcar on Broadway at 23rd
Street.

“He said they would push and jostle passengers, push papers
in their faces and crowd about them,” reported the New-York Tribune on October
18.After one of the thieves jumped off
the car, the detective told the conductor to lock the rear door.He then told the men they were under arrest
and not to attempt to escape.“They were
all big men and did not obey,” said the Tribune.King called upon any able bodied men in the
car to assist him; but “the size of the three men impressed the passengers and
none moved.”

The streetcar continued non-stop along Broadway, passing surprised
people waiting at the stops.Women tried
to get off the car and found themselves locked in.The thieves became more emboldened and King
finally drew his weapon.

“If any one of
your makes a move to leave this car or to make any trouble I’ll shoot.Now I mean business,” he ordered.

“The sight of the pistol increased the panic in the car and
many women became hysterical.Men tried
to hide behind their fellows and look small.”King’s loud police whistle attracted back-up and two patrolmen boarded
the car, arresting John Collins and his cohorts.

The experience failed to change Collins’ lawless ways.He was still living in Shea’s Hotel on March
18, 1906 when he found himself back in police custody.Insurance broker James F. Quinn and his wife
left the New York Theatre on Saturday night, March 17 and boarded the Broadway streetcar
at 44th Street.

“The rear platform was filled with a crowd of well dressed
young men, who crowded us all as we entered.I noticed one of them tug at the chain which held my wife’s lorgnette
and I tried to warn her, but she was inside the car and one of the youths was
between us before I could do so.

“I then felt certain that we were surrounded by pickpockets,
and raised both hands to protect my scarfpin,” he testified in court the
following morning.“As I finally shook
the last one of the crowd off I found that my pocketbook had been stolen from
my hip pocket.My wife’s lorgnette had
also been taken.”

John Collins and his two confederates were arrested once
again for their notorious streetcar pickpocketing, held at $1,000 bail.

The trend continued when another resident, Samuel Berg, was
arrested on February 20, 1907 for swindling.He and a group of con men preyed on naïve out-of-towners.One was Morton Woodman of Fall River,
Massachusetts, who had recently inherited $6,500—a windfall that would amount
to about $166,000 today.The New York
Times reported on his unfortunate gullibility.He was fooled by Berg and his gang into betting his money on a sure
horse race scam.

“He had met a man in a cigar store to whom he told of his
$6,500 awaiting to earn something.His
new acquaintance told him that he had tapped the wires and could always win on
the races.Woodman was taken to a
poolroom where he played a dollar and won five.Then, accompanied by friends of his first friend he went to Fall River,
where he drew out of the bank his $6,500.Then he went with the men to 123 East Twenty-sixth Street, where he lost
his fortune.”

Woodman went to the police and brought detectives to the
place.They broke down the door and
found five men, including Samuel Berg, “with racing sheets, charts, and a large
quantity of ‘phony money.’”Berg was
arrested with the others for running what detectives called “the same old game.”

In 1910 James B. Shea leased the building to Harris Photios
for two years at $480.Sharing the upper floors with disreputable tenants over the years were
hard-working blue collar tenants who simply could not afford to live elsewhere.John Ridgeway
was a 52 year old “laborer” living here when he was injured in a trolley wreck
on July 19, 1921.And in 1924 immigrants
Joe Manes and Frank Bakerjis lived here.They had been “two victims of the entry of the Turkish army into Smyrna two
years ago,” said The New York Times.“They
ascribe their escape and the subsequent rescue of members of their families to
the prompt relief rushed from America through the Red Cross.”

But then there was the problem of unsavory activities at street
level. With Shea's saloon shut down by Prohibition, Friedman’s Pharmacy opened on the the Eighth Avenue side, as did George Papageorge’s jewelry store.On July 9, 1926 Friedman’s was raided by
Prohibition agents who found the drugstore was also selling booze.And on September 18, 1927 43-year old George
Papageorge was arrested when two diamond rings in his store valued at $500 were
identified as being stolen from Max Selsky’s jewelry store at No. 79 Nassau
Street two weeks earlier.When
detectives checked his safe, they found a pistol—a violation of the Sullivan
law.

In 1928 architect Samuel Roth completed a conversion of the hotel into "furnished rooms" on the upper floors. The Department of Buildings cautioned "not more than 15 sleeping rooms in the building."

A year earlier Rose Janousek was 37 years old when she moved to New York
from Lonsdale, Minnesota looking for work.She moved into the former hotel and, like so many of the residents
before her, found herself before a judge a year later on March 22, 1928.

Rose had become enamored with George White, a musical comedy
producer.The woman’s scheme to attract
his attention was somewhat short-sighted.

The New York Times reported “Miss Janousek was arrested on
Wednesday in the lobby of the Apollo Theater on the complaint of theatre
employes who said she had asked John Brennan, a ticket seller, to deliver to George
White a package which was found to contain a pistol and fifty cartridges.”

When detectives questioned her, she admitted that she owned
the handgun and “said she gave it to Mr. White merely because she admired him.”

In 1930 part of the former saloon space on Eighth Avenue was
leased to Sol Cooper for “the sale of cigars.”Within three years the shop space on the 40th Street side was
rented by Joseph Rousso as his tailor shop.The building suddenly seemed to smack of respectability.But that image was challenged when the 40-year old Rousso was arrested
on Christmas Day, 1933. He was held without bail for stealing the wallet of a
subway passenger.

The former saloon and store spaces at ground level are home to a repellent mix of signs and shops today. The hotel entrance was located on the 40th Street side through a shallow, columned portico, now gone.

One of the few residents to garner positive press was
30-year old Helmar Harback.As large
chunks of ice slowly moved down the East River during the frigid winter of
1934, Harback got into a two-week argument as to whether the ice was “of
sufficient strength to carry a man across the stream.”

Finally Harback set out to prove his point.The New York Times reported on February 20 “Equipped
with a borrowed oar, and with the confidence of an Eskimo after a polar bear,
he climbed down the Brooklyn anchorage of the Brooklyn Bridge, picked out a
good floe and began a perilous cruise south on the river.”

As he paddled his miniature iceberg down the river, tugboats and
other vessels blew their whistles, and ships “berthed at piers on the Manhattan
and Brooklyn shores added to the continuous salutation by much flag dipping.”

Harback succeeded and finally docked his ice floe at the
foot of Wall Street.He had attracted a
large crowd of longshoremen and businessmen who shouted their praises.He also attracted the attention of Patrolman
Schecker who exclaimed “Great!” and added “But the drawback is that I’ll have
to arrest you for causing this large crowd to gather, which comes under the
head of disorderly conduct.”

Harback did not find anything disorderly in it.“It was a most orderly voyage,” he
protested.And he repeated that defense
to the judge.Magistrate Erwin accepted
his plea and suspended his sentence, but admonished him “not to cause large
crowds to gather in the future when he ventures forth on an ice floe journey
about the city.”

In 1936 small stores continued to operate from street level
and the second floor was converted to a billiard parlor.That year 25-year old George Paulas, a
resident, was arrested for “compulsory prostitution.”Early that year he and three other men
grabbed 19-year old Vera Hudock and held her prisoner for several months in the
apartment of James Pappas at No. 222 West 27th Street.

On Thursday, May 21 the terrified girl escaped and fled to
the apartment of a friend, Josephine Marz, who lived at No. 322 Third
Avenue.It was Marz who notified police
of the brutality Hudock had suffered.Before authorities could arrest James Pappas, he found Josephine and “brandished
a knife and threatened her with death for interfering.”

George Paulas and the other men were held on $10,000 bail
for their heinous crime.

The brickwork of the chimney shaft was extraordinary.

During World War II there were approximately 40 tenants in
the upper floors.Joseph Saremsky
operated a “restaurant and candy store” on the ground floor in 1945.At the time patriotic citizens nationwide
endured rationing and self-denial as everyday items like sugar, silk and
tobacco became luxuries.But 55-year
old Joseph Samresky was more focused on his personal gain.

On February 1, 1945 The Times reported “The first retailer
in this city convicted of black market dealings in cigarettes was sentenced to
fifteen days in the workhouse and fined $75 by Magistrate Charels E. Hirsimaki
in War Emergency Court yesterday.The
magistrate expressed regret that under the law he was unable to impose a more
severe penalty.”

One reason that tobacco was rationed was so that soldiers on
the front could be supplied with cigarettes.The judge censured Saremsky, “because of black market profiteers like
yourself who hold back supplies for illegal gains it has become almost
impossible for our fighting forces to obtain necessary cigarettes.”

Neighborhoods in Manhattan tend to change.But the Hell’s Kitchen area around Eighth
Avenue and 40th Street seemed impervious to improvement as the
decades passed.The massive Port
Authority Bus Terminal, engulfing an entire city block, which opened across the
avenue from the former Shea’s Hotel in 1950 did nothing to clean up the sordid
area.

By the 1970s the neighborhood was filled with prostitutes,
drug dealers, and sex-oriented shops.The
former Shea’s Hotel was now the Traveler’s Hotel and its reputation had not
improved.On November 5, 1976 one person
seems to have attempted to take on vice single-handedly.That night a massage parlor called the “Pleasure
Studios” at No. 632 Eighth Avenue was destroyed by fire.At the same time someone doused the stairway
of the Traveler’s Hotel with gasoline.The fuel failed to ignite.

The hotel’s reputation may have had something to do with the
attempted arson.On September 6, 1977
the Midtown Enforcement Project helped close down Traveler’s Hotel.The Times reported that “About 40 prostitutes
had been convicted following arrests at the hotel over the last eight months.”

In August 1982 the old hotel was taken over by the West Side
Cluster, an association of Manhattan settlement houses.Four months later a syndicated UPI article
announced “The Traveler’s is a miracle on Eighth Avenue: an old four-story
brick hotel previously frequented by prostitutes that has been converted into a
shelter for the homeless in a run-down neighborhood near Times Square.”

The article explained that the formerly-homeless women “come
and go as they please, pay rent for their rooms from welfare or Social Security
assistance, and abide by a few house rules: no liquor, no cooking in the rooms
and an 11 p.m. curfew.”Fred Greisbach,
director of the group, noted “Most of them come in by 11 anyway because it’s a
dangerous neighborhood.”

The Traveler’s Hotel still operates here.It is accessed through an ominous looking
side door that replaced the stone portico of the 1880s.The ground floor, where tailor shops, jewelry
stores and a saloon with swinging doors once operated, now houses a collection
of gaudy shops with a mish-mash of signs and storefronts.The cornice has lost its little parapet and
the second story openings have been enlarged; but overall the Victorian hotel
with its sordid past survives surprisingly intact.